Thursday, January 24, 2008

The alleged victim of a kidnap-torture plot that prosecutors say was engineered by the leader of Your Black Muslim Bakery in Oakland testified today that she had been beaten and threatened with a hot curling iron by men demanding to know where a friend kept his money.

The woman, identified only as Jane Doe, dabbed at her eyes with a tissue as she described what happened to her May 17 after she and her mother left an East Oakland bingo parlor. She appeared to be uncomfortable and turned away from the defendants when their attorneys cross-examined her.

She said she had been driving on Interstate 580 when a car with emergency lights flashing came up behind her. "I figured the police was pulling me over," she testified at a preliminary hearing for Yusuf Bey IV, 21, his half-brothers Joshua Bey and Yusuf Bey V, Richard Lewis and Tamon Halfin in Alameda County Superior Court in Oakland. Bey IV is the son of the late bakery leader Yusuf Bey. The car with the lights wasn't the police. Investigators say it was a decommissioned Ford Crown Victoria police cruiser, purchased at an auction in Antioch and driven that evening by Bey IV.